On the day after the feast of All Saints, two questions present themselves.

When love takes hold of death,

Life itself is transformed

Christian De Chergé

For whom is this effigy of death today?

One need only circulate in a department of CHSLD (Centre Hospitalier des Soins de Longue Durée-Hospital Center of Long Term Care), to realize that the faces of these persons bear traces that will become evident until their departure…

Wanting to make them disappear by artificial means reminds us that they are there to signify that it is in becoming precise that life expresses itself in its own way, until its last entrenchments…

The faith of the Centurion rises in us and we want to proclaim it to every person we accompany: “It is really the Son, the Daughter of God…, the son of René, the sister of Martine, etc.”

For whom was the effigy of life yesterday?

The effigy of life yesterday represented for us in its own way, our hope in God. We identify death usually, when the last breath is taken, and death allows itself to be totally replaced by this other breath that murmurs at last, “Come to the Father.”

This new life is often so bare that we do not recognize it. Mary Magdalen thought she was with the gardener… The pilgrim ignored everything that had just happened in Jerusalem…

 

The effigy of life like the effigy of death has its own share of mystery and needs a long journey to grasp all its depth: it is the lost child not believing that his faults are all erased, and that looking in the distance, sees his father coming, running, COVERING HIM WITH EMBRACES! It is the big brother who thinks himself so rich and whose harvests amount to nothing…

 

He is risen! He lives!

He is risen! Death is vanquished!

S. Lise Laguë, f.j.